One unique aspect of a life lived on Cape Cod is the relative youth of the geology compared to the continent of America to the west. The iconic upraised arm of a sand spit was only formed 25,000 years ago at the end of the Laurentide Ice Age, a mere blink of an eye in terms of geological time spans. I know enough about coastal geology to be a dangerous tyro, having fulfilled my college science requirement with “Rocks for Jocks,” and from reading Robert N. Oldale’s classic book for the layperson: Cape Cod and the Islands – The Geologic Story (free to download from the USGS in pdf format). Bob Oldale was a good friend of my mom and dad, and he and his wife Gail carved an incredible eagle and quarterboards for my father’s Wianno Senior #140, the Snafu III.
It’s been said that there is a lake or pond on Cape Cod for every day of the year. I’ve fished some of them, but this is post isn’t about bodies of water, but deep, steep-walled holes in the terrain that were formed by melting blocks of ice embedded in the outwash plain of the melting glacier that flowed south from the Laurentian section of Canada, leaving behind a huge deposit of sand, boulders and artifacts that comprise Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
Oldale describes how kettle holes were formed:
“Outwash deposits also form a highly irregular and unorganized morphology called kame and kettle terrain. A kame is a knoll or hill composed of outwash deposits, which originally filled a hole in the ice.ice. When ice melted away, the deposits collapsed to form a hill. A kettle is just the opposite of a kame. The outwash was deposited around and over an ice block. When the ice block melted away, the outwash collapsed to form a hole. Figure 9 shows the relationship between buried ice and collapse morphology in kettle holes and the ice-contact head of outwash.”
Some of these chunks of ice were very big and left behind the ponds and lakes that give rise to the adage that there is a different pond to fish in for every day of the year on the Cape. Kettle holes however, are mostly dry with boggy bottoms where they touch the lens of fresh water beneath that comprise the Cape’s single supply of water.
There are a cluster of these holes in the Santuit Village section between Cotuit and Mashpee south of Lovell’s and Santuit Ponds. On the eastern banks of the Santuit River, by the fabled Wampanoag Trout Mound, is a cranberry bog purported to the be the first commercial cranberry operation started by A.D. Makepeace, the entrepreneur who’s cultivation of cranberries led to the founding of the modern day Ocean Spray company. Further east, beside the Isiah Thomas Book Store on Route 28 and the colonial Crocker House (formerly the Regatta Restaurant, now known as Villagio’s) are two perfect kettle holes to the north and south of the highway, available for a quick glimpse as one drives to Falmouth or Hyannis.
These are very deep, crater-like formations with steep banks. Some are 50 feet deep by my estimate and seem to have their own unique ecosystem of cedars, red maples, and other swamp vegetation.
The recently opened network of trails in Mashpee’s Santuit Pond Preserve offer some good views of abandoned cranberry bogs as well as an exceptional kettle hole off of the trail that skirts the eastern bank of the Santuit River south of the new herring ladder (the trailhead and parking lot is on Route 130 to the southeast of the Access Auto Shell Station). It’s a great two hour hike through some of the most historical landscape on the Cape. The Wampanoag tribe’s traditional center is in the area, including the site of the original church built by Richard Bourne in the 1660s on Briant’s Neck, the Trout Mound, and the site of the Mashpee Woodlot Revolt of 1838.
